How to Get Your Stuff Back After a Narcissist Steals It

If you were unlucky enough to find yourself divorcing a narcissist, there’s bad news I have to break to you: The money is never coming back. Ditto that one-of-a-kind piece of blown glass he said he bought and you finally gave up because it was just too expensive to have lawyers exchange emails over that wonderful piece of the Aegean you purchased on the honeymoon with your own hard-earned cash. These are the property losses, some sentimental and others merely about dollars and cents—even lots of them—and it’s time you took a deep cleansing breath and simply forgot about them.

Ditto the time you spent in the relationship—Gone, gone, gone, unless you can get your hands on a flux capacitator, a used DeLorean, and a dude with white hair which, all things considered, is highly unlikely. Maddening, to be sure, but the spilled milk adage applies and a sponge is what’s called for, not self-blame or even tears.

So, what about the other stuff that got stolen? Well, that’s the part I want to focus on because I’ve yet to meet anyone recovering from a narcissist who doesn’t feel like the rifled and empty shelves of a robbed boutique. This piece has been written from a woman’s point of view because all of my interviews were women; that said, women are narcissists too and men also bleed. Feel free to switch up the pronouns.

Post-mortem on the robbery

It’s what you didn’t see about the guy in question and your misunderstanding of his motives that allowed you to hand him the keys to the store. No, I’m not blaming but to move on, you have to see how the robbery happened; we’re playing detective here. Mind you, these folks are very, very good at what they do which is primarily manipulating others and writing a script for the relationship, neither of which is immediately clear. That script, by the way, has its ups and downs so you’re much more inclined to attribute the rhythm to passion than to orchestration; he’s a master of the snow job, the doer of good deeds and sweet gestures when he needs to get you back on track. Dream vacation? Check! Extravagant flowers just because? Check!